Possible Worlds and Other Essays by JBS Haldane – review
It is the fate of good scientists to be overtaken or overturned, but if they write like Haldane they are unlikely to be overlookedOur next Science Book Club title is Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe by Martin Rees, which Tim will review on Friday 8 JuneIn the last paragraph of the title essay of this book, JBS Haldane delivers a modest but memorable verdict: "It is my suspicion that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."Haldane composed this sentence around the time that Edwin Hubble confirmed that the universe was not just the Milky Way, but before Hubble began to calculate the rate at which the other newly discovered galaxies were receding; years before the proposal and discovery of antimatter; decades before the confirmation of the big bang theory; the "discoveries" first of dark matter, then of...
Read the whole article on The Guardian - Science
More from The Guardian - Science
Related
- Astronomically large lenses measure the age and size of the universeMon, 1 Mar 2010, 12:10:17 EST
- Forming the present-day spiral galaxiesThu, 4 Feb 2010, 11:24:40 EST
- New research resolves conflict in theory of how galaxies formWed, 13 Jan 2010, 13:32:27 EST
- Hubble views the star that changed the universeMon, 23 May 2011, 19:32:47 EDT
- Hubble survey carries out a dark matter censusThu, 13 Oct 2011, 10:38:06 EDT